Apocalypse
Nowby Edward Said, in
Arabic in Al-Hayat, London, and in English in Al Ahram Weekly, Cairo

It would be a mistake, I
think, to reduce what is happening between Iraq and the United States simply
to an assertion of Arab will and sovereignty on the one hand versus American
imperialism, which undoubtedly plays a central role in all this. However
misguided, Saddam Hussein's cleverness is not that he is splitting America
from its allies (which he has not really succeeded in doing for any practical
purpose) but that he is exploiting the astonishing clumsiness and failures
of US foreign policy. Very few people, least of all Saddam himself, can
be fooled into believing him to be the innocent victim of American bullying;
most of what is happening to his unfortunate people who are undergoing
the most dreadful and unacknowledged suffering is due in considerable degree
to his callous cynicism -- first of all, his indefensible and ruinous invasion
of Kuwait, his persecution of the Kurds, his cruel egoism and pompous self-regard
which persists in aggrandizing himself and his regime at exorbitant and,
in my opinion, totally unwarranted cost. It is impossible for him to plead
the case for national security and sovereignty now given his abysmal disregard
of it in the case of Kuwait and Iran.

Be that as it may, US vindictiveness,
whose sources I shall look at in a moment, has exacerbated the situation
by imposing a regime of sanctions which, as Sandy Berger, the American
National Security adviser has just said proudly, is unprecedented for its
severity in the whole of world history. 567,000 Iraqi civilians have died
since the Gulf War, mostly as a result of disease, malnutrition and deplorably
poor medical care. Agriculture and industry are at a total standstill.
This is unconscionable of course, and for this the brazen inhumanity of
American policy-makers is also very largely to blame. But we must not forget
that Saddam is feeding that inhumanity quite deliberately in order to dramatize
the opposition between the US and the rest of the Arab world; having provoked
a crisis with the US (or the UN dominated by the US) he at first dramatised
the unfairness of the sanctions. But by continuing it as he is now doing,
the issue has changed and has become his non-compliance, and the terrible
effects of the sanctions have been marginalised. Still the underlying causes
of an Arab/US crisis remain.

A careful analysis of that crisis
is imperative. The US has always opposed any sign of Arab nationalism or
independence, partly for its own imperial reasons and partly because its
unconditional support for Israel requires it to do so. Since the l973 war,
and despite the brief oil embargo, Arab policy up to and including the
peace process has tried to circumvent or mitigate that hostility by appealing
to the US for help, by "good" behavior, by willingness to make peace with
Israel. Yet mere compliance with the US's wishes can produce nothing except
occasional words of American approbation for leaders who appear "moderate":
Arab policy was never backed up with coordination, or collective pressure,
or fully agreed upon goals. Instead each leader tried to make separate
arrangements both with the US and with Israel, none of which produced very
much except escalating demands and a constant refusal by the US to exert
any meaningful pressure on Israel. The more extreme Israeli policy becomes
the more likely the US has been to support it. And the less respect it
has for the large mass of Arab peoples whose future and well-being are
mortgaged to illusory hopes embodied, for instance, in the Oslo accords.

Moreover, a deep gulf separates Arab
culture and civilization on the one hand, from the United States on the
other, and in the absence of any collective Arab information and cultural
policy, the notion of an Arab people with traditions, cultures and identities
of their own is simply inadmissible in the US. Arabs are dehumanized, they
are seen as violent irrational terrorists always on the lookout for murder
and bombing outrages. The only Arabs worth doing business with for the
US are compliant leaders, businessmen, military people whose arms purchases
(the highest per capita in the world) are helping the American economy
keep afloat. Beyond that there is no feeling at all, for instance, for
the dreadful suffering of the Iraqi people whose identity and existence
have simply been lost sight of in the present situation.

This morbid, obsessional fear and
hatred of the Arabs has been a constant theme in US foreign policy since
World War Two. In some way also, anything positive about the Arabs is seen
in the US as a threat to Israel. In this respect pro-Israeli American Jews,
traditional Orientalists, and military hawks have played a devastating
role. Moral opprobrium is heaped on Arab states as it is on no others.
Turkey, for example, has been conducting a campaign against the Kurds for
several years, yet nothing is heard about this in the US. Israel occupies
territory illegally for thirty years, it violates the Geneva conventions
at will, conducts invasions, terrorist attacks and assassinations against
Arabs, and still, the US vetoes every sanction against it in the UN. Syria,
Sudan, Libya, Iraq are classified as "rogue" states. Sanctions against
them are far harsher than against any other countries in the history of
US foreign policy. And still the US expects that its own foreign policy
agenda ought to prevail (eg., the woefully misguided Doha economic summit)
despite its hostility to the collective Arab agenda.

In the case of Iraq a number of further
extenuations make the US even more repressive. Burning in the collective
American unconscious is a puritanical zeal decreeing the sternest possible
attitude towards anyone deemed to be an unregenerate sinner. This clearly
guided American policy towards the native American Indians, who were first
demonized, then portrayed as wasteful savages, then exterminated, their
tiny remnant confined to reservations and concentration camps. This almost
religious anger fuels a judgemental attitude that has no place at all in
international politics, but for the United States it is a central tenet
of its worldwide behavior. Second, punishment is conceived in apocalyptic
terms. During the Vietnam war a leading general advocated -- and almost
achieved -- the goal of bombing the enemy into the stone age. The same
view prevailed during the Gulf War in l99l. Sinners are meant to be condemned
terminally, with the utmost cruelty regardless of whether or not they suffer
the cruelest agonies. The notion of "justified" punishment for Iraq is
now uppermost in the minds of most American consumers of news, and with
that goes an almost orgiastic delight in the gathering power being summoned
to confront Iraq in the Gulf.

Pictures of four (or is now five?)
immense aircraft carriers steaming virtuously away punctuate breathless
news bulletins about Saddam's defiance, and the impending crisis. The President
announces that he is thinking not about the Gulf but about the 21st century:
how can we tolerate Iraq's threat to use biological warfare even though
(this is unmentioned) it is clear from the UNSCOM reports that he neither
has the missile capacity, nor the chemical arms, nor the nuclear arsenal,
nor in fact the anthrax bombs that he is alleged to be brandishing? Forgotten
in all this is that the US has all the terror weapons known to humankind,
is the only country to have used a nuclear bomb on civilians, and as recently
as seven years ago dropped 66,000 tons of bombs on Iraq. As the only country
involved in this crisis that has never had to fight a war on its own soil,
it is easy for the US and its mostly brain-washed citizens to speak in
apocalyptic terms. A report out of Australia on Sunday, November l6 suggests
that Israel and the US are thinking about a neutron bomb on Baghdad.

Unfortunately the dictates of raw
power are very severe and, for a weak state like Iraq, overwhelming. Certainly
US misuse of the sanctions to strip Iraq of everything, including any possibility
for security is monstrously sadistic. The so-called UN 661 Committee created
to oversee the sanctions is composed of fifteen member states (including
the US) each of which has a veto.

Every time Iraq passes this committee a request to sell oil for medicines,
trucks, meat, etc., any member of the committee can block these requests
by saying that a given item may have military purposes (tires, for example,
or ambulances). In addition the US and its clients -- eg., the unpleasant
and racist Richard Butler, who says openly that Arabs have a different
notion of truth than the rest of the world -- have made it clear that even
if Iraq is completely reduced militarily to the point where it is no longer
a threat to its neighbors (which is now the case) the real goal of the
sanctions is to topple Saddam Hussein's government. In other words according
to the Americans, very little that Iraq can do short of Saddam's resignation
or death will produce a lifting of sanctions. Finally, we should not for
a moment forget that quite apart from its foreign policy interest, Iraq
has now become a domestic American issue whose repercussions on issues
unrelated to oil or the Gulf are very important. Bill Clinton's personal
crises -- the campaign-funding scandals, an impending trial for sexual
harassment, his various legislative and domestic failures -- require him
to look strong, determined and "presidential" somewhere else, and where
but in the Gulf against Iraq has he so ready-made a foreign devil to set
off his blue-eyed strength to full advantage. Moreover, the increase in
military expenditure for new investments in electronic "smart" weaponry,
more sophisticated aircraft, mobile forces for the world-wide projection
of American power are perfectly suited for display and use in the Gulf,
where the likelihood of visible casualties (actually suffering Iraqi civilians)
is extremely small, and where the new military technology can be put through
its paces most attractively. For reasons that need restating here, the
media is particularly happy to go along with the government in bringing
home to domestic customers the wonderful excitement of American self-righteousness,
the proud flag-waving, the "feel-good" sense that "we" are facing down
a monstrous dictator. Far from analysis and calm reflection the media exists
mainly to derive its mission from the government, not to produce a corrective
or any dissent. The media, in short, is an extension of the war against
Iraq.

The saddest aspect of the whole thing
is that Iraqi civilians seem condemned to additional suffering and protracted
agony. Neither their government nor that of the US is inclined to ease
the daily pressure on them, and the probability that only they will pay
for the crisis is extremely high. At least -- and it isn't very much --
there seems to be no enthusiasm among Arab governments for American military
action, but beyond that there is no coordinated Arab position, not even
on the extremely grave humanitarian question. It is unfortunate that, according
to the news, there is rising popular support for Saddam in the Arab world,
as if the old lessons of defiance without real power have still not been
learned.

Undoubtedly the US has manipulated
the UN to its own ends, a rather shameful exercise given at the same time
that the Congress once again struck down a motion to pay a billion dollars
in arrears to the world organization. The major priority for Arabs, Europeans,
Muslims and Americans is to push to the fore the issue of sanctions and
the terrible suffering imposed on innocent Iraqi civilians. Taking the
case to the International Court in the Hague strikes me as a perfectly
viable possibility, but what is needed is a concerted will on behalf of
Arabs who have suffered the US's egregious blows for too long without an
adequate response.